


Glass Half Full

by SinceYouAskedMeForATaleOf



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Abandonment, Adopted Children, Adoption, Alpha Kylo Ren, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Gore, Break Up, Cesarean Section, Character Death, Child Death, Infant Death, M/M, Miscarriage, Mpreg, Omega Armitage Hux, Omega Verse, Post-Battle of Starkiller Base, Serious Injuries, Survival, That's Not How ABO Works
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-07
Updated: 2017-10-07
Packaged: 2019-01-10 09:07:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12295950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SinceYouAskedMeForATaleOf/pseuds/SinceYouAskedMeForATaleOf
Summary: Starkiller has fallen. Kylo is gravely injured and unconscious in a bacta tank. Hux sits and watches, alone with his other grief- the loss of their pups. As more survivors of the disaster trickle into the med bay, things begin to change for Hux...





	Glass Half Full

**Author's Note:**

> This is dark. Please heed the tags. There's no MCD in this, but there is a lot of infant loss.

The loss was, in hindsight, inevitable. 

Hux had always been delicate. Too thin, too weak, too sickly, too easily broken. All Omegas were smaller than the other designations, but he’d grown tall as any Alpha without the weight to support his size.

Ren had so often made a point of it.

He’d wrap those thick brutal fingers around wrists and ankles, laughing when they were engulfed by his digits. It made the Alpha feel all the more powerful to have so fragile a Mate.

Not that anyone knew but the two of them and their medics. No, Ren had been happy to keep Hux’ secret, to let him fool the crew into thinking he was an Alpha too, but he'd so loved to tease…

“One of these days, Hux, your suppressants will slip and you'll catch at last,” he'd purr while he held Hux pinned with muscles and knot. “One of these days… maybe I'll use the Force to do it. Do you think the Force can make you give me a litter… I think it can…”

Every damn time Hux had fallen for those filthy tempting words and each time he'd ended up writhing on the Alpha’s knot begging for the thing he couldn't have.

They'd never discussed it. 

Outside the bedroom and Hux’s heats Kylo had never once said ‘give me a child’ so Hux had felt no reason to explain.

He wasn't on suppressants. He'd never needed them. Perhaps it was due to his weight or his inferior genetics but Hux had never had a proper cycle. His heats were weak tepid things that barely affected him or his work ethic. A regular lay every six hours and no one was any the wiser. He’d worked for years surrounded by Alphas without anyone catching a whiff of him. At times he’d revelled in it. 

How many Alphas complained that an Omega couldn’t be in command because their distress would infect the crew? How many had argued that a wounded Omega would draw too much attention from the fight?

In that at least he’d proved them wrong.

No one had noticed his morning sickness in the weeks before Starkiller’s first firing.

No one had noticed when the stress of the Resistance attack brought on a bleed he was powerless to stop.

No one had noticed that the blood on the snowy ground didn’t just belong to Kylo Ren.

So here he sat, in the corner of the overcrowded medical bay, staring at Ren’s bacta tank like a leader who’d lost their way in the face of defeat, not an Omega losing their litter and watching their Mate hover on the brink of death.

If Ren could even be called his Mate.

Ren had known about the pups, had smelled it on him a month ago. Far from being pleased, he’d panicked. 

Loyal to Snoke and the darkness, wary of his family’s genes and Hux’s ambition, of course he’d turned and run. Of course he’d lashed out. Of course what they’d had together had been ruined. 

When Hux had hauled Ren out of the snow while everything he valued collapsed around him there’d been a flicker of something in his eyes, half hidden under the blood. 

Regret maybe. 

Acknowledgement at least, that something important had been lost. Whether it was them, or the pups, or Starkiller, or just Ren’s own worthless pride Hux couldn’t be sure.

Hux hadn’t even known he’d wanted the pups until he’d seen the scans. It had felt right somehow, sitting in a medical bay just like this on Starkiller, surrounded by his creations inside and out. It had felt like a victory against his own body, against expectation and convention. 

Now they were gone, just like Starkiller. Ren had already left him in heart, and now he might do the same in body. 

Around him the medical bay heaved with wounded evacuees who’d been caught in the planet’s collapse. So many burns, so many broken or missing limbs. 

There wasn’t enough bacta for them all. There wasn’t even enough bacta for him. 

The medic who’d confirmed the miscarriage had said that a bacta emersion would normally have been used to have Hux back to normal in less than a day. Instead Hux would have to cope with this on his own over the next week or two. He’d said that with a tone that suggested Hux deserved it for all the thousands of First Order troops dying around them. 

Right now Hux felt perhaps he deserved the pain.

How the shields had fallen, how the oscillator had been destroyed- he didn’t entirely know. 

But he was in command. 

It was his fault. 

There was so much he had to do once the painkillers kicked in enough for his legs to work. 

He had to make things right. 

He had to bring the First Order back from the brink while they still had the advantage he’d gained by destroying the Senate and the Republic’s fleet.

He had to, he had to, he had to...

He sat on the gurney, his uniform sticky and clinging with blood, watching Kylo Ren turn slowly in the red stained bacta. The wall against his back was cold. He could feel his heartbeat in his skin. 

He couldn’t bring himself to move.

A shout when up, rippling across the crowded space. 

An Alpha, slick with blood and half mad with grief, was begging for a medic for their Mate. 

Hux could see them from here, reflected in the side of the bacta tank. Lieutenant Rodinon- a junior officer he’d last seen in Starkiller’s command centre- was barely recognisable under the gore and soot. 

The figure in his arms was recognisable as an Omega only by the bulge at their waist. One shoulder had been burned away and the face seemed barely human anymore. Hux couldn’t remember if he’d ever known the name of Rodinon’s Mate. 

How they were alive after all, Hux couldn’t tell, but one medic was shouting about a heartbeat and others were running towards the group. It seemed like a waste of resources, to focus on a single badly wounded patient when others were writhing and screaming around them. 

Perhaps the other officers had been right to complain about Omegas. 

Something made Hux turn in place to observe the scene with his own eyes and not in the reflection on the tank. He still didn’t  _ care _ by any measure he could articulate, he felt numb to his very core, but some kind of curiosity made him look.

The view was clearer this way, not as distorted by the curve of the tank or the intervening figures. 

Rodinon had collapsed over the head of the Omega, his body shaking slightly as if he couldn’t contain his grief. His back was a mess of burns, shrapnel, and deep, deep wounds. 

It had been years since Hux had studied anatomy but he swore that several ribs were visible amongst the red. 

They said an Alpha would do anything to protect their Mate. That they’d survive wounds that would normally kill them just to get their Omega to safety. 

Hux glanced at Ren’s tank. 

He didn’t believe it. 

But Rodinon did look like a dead man who just didn’t know it yet. 

The Omega was dead. 

A medic had cut them open, sternum to pubis, and was gently removing small red shapes from their abdomen. Each tiny, unmoving pup was placed on the Omega’s chest. 

Perhaps it was his own loss talking, the fact that his own pups were leaving him, that made the act seem so terribly wrong. They had died together. They should be sent out into the stars together. Not separated like this. 

A voice in his head wished he’d stayed on Starkiller, died with all his creations, not left to live this half-life of defeat, regret and responsibility. No one would have mourned him, not like Rodinon mourned for his Omega, but then a failure like him probably didn’t deserve it.

“General Hux, Sir, can you step back?” 

Hux hadn’t realised he’d moved from his place on the gurney. He must have threaded his way through the crowd, passed between seven or eight other beds and groups of medics without even noticing.

The painkillers must be strong then. Affecting his judgement. He shouldn’t take more.

A sweet smell was in the air, a thin thread of scent under the stench of gore and burned flesh.

“Sir?”

The medic lifted the last pup free, a tiny little thing, barely longer than his hand.

Hux snatched it from him. 

He felt like he was going mad, like his mind was being controlled by something outside of himself. 

He watched himself wiping the blood and caul from the baby’s face… a fingertip dipped into its mouth to clear the airway… a gasping gurgling breath.

An infant’s wail, high and thin and crawling down his spine like pinpricks.

His stomach was roiling as he stared down at the child in his hands. Undeniably premature, but old enough to survive, and apparently unharmed by its traumatic entry into the world. 

Whatever was controlling his mind wanted him to keep the child. He hadn’t even thought about the process of nesting yet with his own pups but he knew this infant needed care.

“Sir, give me the pup,” the medic said gently.

Someone growled. 

Hux looked toward Rodinon, thinking the Alpha was becoming distressed by his handling of the pup, but the light had gone from his eyes. 

Rodinon was dead. The infant was an orphan then.

“Sir, please,” the medic was pleading now, “she needs a surrogate Omega if she’s going to survive.”

It was only on the second growl that Hux realised the sound was coming from him. 

He held her out, embarrassed by his strange behaviour. 

Although he let the medic exam her and cut her cord, he didn’t actually relinquish his hold on that small body.

Another medic, the one who’d confirmed Hux’s own loss, stepped in to murmur to his colleague.

After a brief discussion they turned to look at Hux, the first wearing a look of sceptical surprise. 

“You haven’t had any other litters, have you, Sir? No prior experience with infants?”

Hux hadn’t moved other than to shift the child to rest against his clavicle where his uniform was ripped, an intuitive action to maintain her body temperature. 

“It doesn’t matter,” the second medic cut in, “he’s a pregnant Omega… well, you know what I mean… instinct will take over.”

“That’s a myth!”

“My younger brother.” Hux said quietly. “I… I raised him, in a way. I was only four but I was an Omega, the same as him. It was assumed that I could cope. I did.” 

He swallowed, suddenly aware that he didn’t even know if Bill had survived. It had been so long since he’d last seen his brother. The technician had been assigned to manage Starkiller’s data core, deep under the surface. It’d be weeks before he’d know for sure.

The first medic opened their mouth to say more, but another shout went up from the corridors outside. More casualties, more work for them all.

“We haven’t time for this! Take her. The quartermaster will be able to supply you with milk and linen. You’re on your own.”

And then he was.

Alone in the crowd with just the soft breathing of the child against his neck. She was already asleep. 

He could smell her, the sweet soft scent that an Omega was supposed to associate with their pups. Hux had to assume his own grief addled body was adjusting to officially adopt her. 

It happened, in times of war or disaster. One Omega might find themselves taking on the care of twenty infants or more at a time. 

That was what made Omegas powerful. Once an Omega adopted a child like that it would be welcomed by the rest of the pack as if it were their own flesh and blood. Humanity had moved beyond that animalistic past, but the First Order was a pack in its own way, the Finalizer’s crew was a community in itself. 

Hux drifted into the hall, walking slowly towards the quartermaster’s store and being careful to shield his new daughter from the chaos in the corridors. 

She would be a symbol to the rest of the crew. A new life saved from the jaws of death, just as Hux intended to save the First Order from this disaster and bring them to victory.

He would name her Zorya. Rising Star. Perfect for a redhaired pup.

Kylo Ren was left behind him now. Forgotten. He would be sent away to train with Snoke and Hux wouldn’t even think to check on his health before he left.

He more important things to focus on now.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, Rodinon's mate was Techie...


End file.
